Follow Us

More

Roblox Reinstates PewDiePie's Account After 'Accidental' Ban

Well, well, well, Roblox. You thought you could ban the mighty PewDiePie? Well, clearly you could, because you did, but not for long. It just goes to show, you can’t keep a good internet personality down.

As we all know, the Let’s Play has become a huge force in the gaming world. Some like to watch them to get a good feel for the title in question, some are more interested in how others approach a game they’ve already played. Still others just like the YouTuber/streamer themselves, and would happily watch them play Yard Work Simulator 2019 or something.

How we arrived at this point as a society is tough to say, but the fact is that watching games is just as much a pastime as actively playing them. In some cases (such as with the mighty Apex Legends), there are more gamers watching than playing. That’s just the way of things, though.

Inevitably, then, there are going to be some streamers and YouTubers who become super popular. Perhaps the best known is PewDiePie, Sweden’s Felix Kjellberg. He’s a controversial character that some love and others love to hate, but nobody can deny one thing: he’s tapped into the whole Let’s Play culture and made himself a heck of a lot of money in the process.

All this fame and fortune comes at a cost, though. As Kanye West repeatedly tells anyone who’ll listen, the haters are everywhere. You become popular, yes, but you also become a little slice of pop culture. Before you know it, you’re a meme. And this is exactly the problem that led to the banning of PewDiePie’s Roblox account.

With Roblox’s online-play-centric approach, it was inevitable that some bad apples were going to surface. Toxic players, offensive language, trolls, spammers… these things aren’t new to anybody who’s spent more than a nanosecond on the internet. They’re issues that developers everywhere have to try to manage, though, as the Roblox team explained:

“Roblox is committed to providing a safe and civil platform for our players, including blocking memes that represent or are synonymous for behavior that falls outside of our community standards.”

Where did good ol’ Pewds come in, then? Well, he didn’t, exactly. Not directly.

“In December, “pewdie” became one of these negative memes on Roblox. As such, we began blocking the creation of new usernames that incorporated the term “pewdie.” The legacy account that PewDiePie used in his livestream was incorrectly banned as part of the administration of this policy. His legacy account is being reinstated.”

There we go, then. PewDiePie is being welcomed back into the Roblox fold. It wasn’t his fault, but rather those who were using his mighty internet name in vain. A lesson learned, then. "Fame is a fickle friend," as that guy from Harry Potter with the nice teeth once said.